Association football, more known as football or soccer, is a team sport played with a spherical ball between two teams of 11 players. It is played by 250 million players in over 200 countries and dependencies, making it the world's most popular sport; the game is played on a rectangular field called a pitch with a goal at each end. The object of the game is to score by moving the ball beyond the goal line into the opposing goal. Football is played in accordance with a set of rules known as the Laws of the Game; the ball is 68 -- 70 known as the football. The two teams each compete thereby scoring a goal; the team that has scored more goals at the end of the game is the winner. Each team is led by a captain who has only one official responsibility as mandated by the Laws of the Game: to represent their team in the coin toss prior to kick-off or penalty kicks. Players are not allowed to touch the ball with hands or arms while it is in play, except for the goalkeepers within the penalty area. Other players use their feet to strike or pass the ball, but may use any other part of their body except the hands and the arms.

The team that scores most goals by the end of the match wins. If the score is level at the end of the game, either a draw is declared or the game goes into extra time or a penalty shootout depending on the format of the competition. Football is governed internationally by the International Federation of Association Football, which organises World Cups for both men and women every four years; the FIFA World Cup has taken place every four years since 1930 with the exception of 1942 and 1946 tournaments, which were cancelled due to World War II. 190–200 national teams compete in qualifying tournaments within the scope of continental confederations for a place in the finals. The finals tournament, held every four years, involves 32 national teams competing over a four-week period, it is the most prestigious football tournament in the world as well as the most viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding the Olympic Games. The most prestigious competition in club football is the UEFA Champions League which attracts an extensive television audience throughout the world.

The final of the tournament has been, in recent years, the most-watched annual sporting event in the world. The top five European leagues are the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Ligue 1. Attracting most of the world's best players, each of the leagues has a total wage cost in excess of £600 million/€763 million/US$1.185 billion. Football is one of a family of football codes, which emerged from various ball games played worldwide since antiquity; the modern game traces its origins to 1863 when the Laws of the Game were codified in England by The Football Association. The rules of association football were codified in England by the Football Association in 1863 and the name association football was coined to distinguish the game from the other forms of football played at the time rugby football; the first written "reference to the inflated ball used in the game" was in the mid-14th century: "Þe heued fro þe body went, Als it were a foteballe". The Online Etymology Dictionary states that the "rules of the game" were made in 1848, before the "split off in 1863".

The term soccer comes from a slang or jocular abbreviation of the word "association", with the suffix "-er" appended to it. The word soccer was first recorded in 1889 in the earlier form of socca. Within the English-speaking world, association football is now called "football" in the United Kingdom and "soccer" in Canada and the United States. People in countries where other codes of football are prevalent may use either term, although national associations in Australia and New Zealand now use "football" for the formal name. Kicking ball games arose independently multiple times across multiple cultures. According to FIFA, the Chinese competitive game cuju is the earliest form of football for which there is evidence. Cuju players could use any part of the body apart from hands and the intent was kicking a ball through an opening into a net, it was remarkably similar to modern football. During the Han Dynasty, cuju games were standardised and rules were established. Phaininda and episkyros were Greek ball games.

An image of an episkyros player depicted in low relief on a vase at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens appears on the UEFA European Championship Cup. Athenaeus, writing in 228 AD, referenced the Roman ball game harpastum. Phaininda and harpastum were played involving hands and violence, they all appear to have resembled rugby football and volleyball more than what is recognizable as modern football. As with pre-codified "mob football", the antecedent of all modern football codes, these three games involved more handling the ball than kicking. Other games included kemari in chuk-guk in Korea. Association football in itself does not have a classical history. Notwithstanding any similarities to other ball games played around the world FIFA has recognised that no historical connection exists with any game played in antiquity outside Europe; the modern rules of association football are based on the mid-19th century efforts to standardise the varying forms of football played in the public schools o

Panic was part of the EC Comics line during the mid-1950s. The bi-monthly humor comic was published by Bill Gaines as a companion to Harvey Kurtzman's Mad, being imitated by other comic publishers. Panic was edited by Al Feldstein. Beginning with its first issue, Panic had a 12-issue run over two years. Feldstein was the primary cover artist, with stories illustrated by Jack Davis, Will Elder, Jack Kamen, Joe Orlando, Basil Wolverton and Wally Wood; some story ideas were by Nick Meglin the co-editor of Mad. Scripts were by Feldstein and Jack Mendelsohn a co-screenwriter of Yellow Submarine and an Emmy-nominated TV comedy writer. EC dubbed Panic the "only authorized imitation" of Mad. Thirty years Harvey Kurtzman told an interviewer, "Panic was another sore point. Gaines, by some convoluted reasoning, decided to double the profit of Mad by doing a Feldstein version of Mad and he just plundered all of my techniques and artists. For this there was a real conflict of interests." The publication was controversial, as detailed by Steve Stiles in his article,"It's a Panic!": What Panic earned was a storm of indignation that burst over Gaines' head with the first issue, all over the holiday of "Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men".

It's strange that Gaines didn't see it coming, but some people got annoyed with a satire of "The Night Before Christmas". To put it mildly. Gaines recalled, "The trouble we had on the Santa Claus story was Bill Elder, he had put a sign on the sleigh of Santa Claus,'Just Divorced'. Now how do a bunch of iconoclastic, atheist bastards like us know that Santa Claus is a saint and that he can't be divorced and that this is going to offend Boston?" This didn't stop Gaines from dressing in a Santa suit and posing for a Mad subscription offer as a benevolent gift giver. As a result of the parody, Panic was banned from sale in the state of Massachusetts. Gaines puckishly responded by issuing a press release announcing that as a "retaliatory measure," EC was pulling all copies of its Picture Stories from the Bible comic book out of Massachusetts, it took the newspapers a few days to realize that the discontinued comic hadn't been on sale in Massachusetts, or anywhere else, in five years. More legal hassles came EC's way because of another story from the first issue, a gory parody of Mickey Spillane's My Gun is the Jury that ended with one of Spillane's bombshell women revealed as a transvestite.

A few days after the Santa controversy in Massachusetts, EC's offices were raided by the New York City police. Gaines' associate Lyle Stuart was arrested. In the meantime, abrasive gossip columnist Walter Winchell reported the story without mentioning that Stuart was released without result, added, "Attention all newsstands! Anyone selling the filth of Lyle Stuart will be subject to the same arrest!" Winchell may have been motivated by "The Secret Life of Walter Winchell", a negative book based on a series of negative magazine articles about him written by Stuart, but his rhetoric cost him $21,500 after Stuart sued for libel. Stuart used the money to start his own publishing house. Mad was and imitated, to the point where creator and editor Harvey Kurtzman mocked his competitors' wave of copycat humor comic books in Mad's 17th issue, but he was unhappy with EC's own imitation. "I was pretty bitter about it," Kurtzman said in 1965. "The publisher and I got into a series of ever-increasing arguments going around in diminishing circles."

Publisher Gaines rejected Kurtzman's complaint, telling an interviewer decades later: Sometimes Harvey loses sight of the fact that this was my business, that I was publishing these magazines, that one of my magazines was Mad, that I had a lot of other magazines making more or less profits, some of them none, what's so immoral about me putting out another magazine imitating my own magazine? You see; that was the basic problem. To me Mad was one of the EC Comics. If we put out The Vault of Horror and it's successful, what's wrong with putting out Tales From the Crypt? If we put out Mad and it's successful, what's wrong with putting out — all the time we put out Panic, Harvey felt we were competing with him, I used to say, "Harvey, we're not competing with you, we're all one company; the money comes from everywhere and it goes into a pot and from this pot we publish." Why am I competing? And it was something, he felt. The fact that 30 to 70 other people were imitating Mad, Martin Goodman had half a dozen, there were 70 titles I understand, my printer once counted them up, because he used to keep a list of all the comics published and he told me there were 70.

I think he was wrong, but there were 30, 40, or 50 imitations of Mad. You know, Ecch, Turn Blue was Shelly Mayer's, I can't remember them all, Cracked, Silly, Daffy, we got all these imitations of Mad, that's OK, but if I put out Panic it's immoral. Panic has been reprinted by publisher Russ Cochran several times. In 1985, it formed part of his Complete EC Library, published as a slipcased hardcover two-volume set. Panic was reprinted issue-by-issue between March 1997 and December 1999 by Cochran; this complete run was rebound, with covers included, in three softcover EC Annu

Joan Huydecoper van Maarsseveen took over the family tannery business and the trade in pelts and armaments. The name Huydecoper means literally'buyer of pelts'. Huydecoper had a prosperous political career: first he was elected to the vroedschap of Amsterdam, he was six times a mayor of Amsterdam. Van Marsseveen was born in Amsterdam. In 1602, his father was an initial investor in the Dutch East India Company, he had shares in the Magellan Company, that traded with South America. In 1622 his son bought a property in the Jordaan, where he had seven houses built, three of which along the Lauriergracht. Johan Huydecoper is mentioned as the first person in Amsterdam, who bought a painting from Rembrandt. Huydecoper and Rembrandt met each other at an early stage, as they both lived or worked in the Sint Antoniesbreestraat. Huydecoper became a connoisseur of fine arts and was friendly with Jan Vos, who praised his house and collection of paintings in several poems, one on a painting by Rubens. In 1639, Philip Vingboons designed his mansion on Singel.

Huydecoper was a real-estate developer along the river Vecht, where he had his country house. Schwartz wrote: "What art could contribute to Maarsseveen: architecture to beautify it, map-making to advertise it, poetry to immortalise it, he used the patronage he wielded in Amsterdam to put artists scholars, publishers to work for him in Maarsseveen". In 1650, Huydecoper had the gates closed, the bridges lifted, the city protected, when William II of Orange tried to attack Amsterdam, he was involved in the decoration of the new city hall on Dam Square. During his office as a burgomaster, he chose the side of Cornelis de Graeff and made several diplomatic trips. Huydecoper symbolises the prosperity of Amsterdam during the Golden Age and managed to unify wealth and the cultural elite status in Amsterdam, he was the father of burgomaster Joan Huydecoper II and father-in-law of Jan J. Hinlopen, an art collector